Lou Malnati’s Returns to Flossmoor

We are proud to announce the next Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria will be opening in fall 2016 in Flossmoor, ILat3315 Vollmer Road!

For the Malnati family, this location comes with its own unique history.

In 1977, just before Lou Malnati passed away, he opened a pizzeria in Flossmoor at this exact spot on Vollmer Road. Unfortunately, despite the Malnati family’s best efforts, this restaurant closed in 1978.

Read Marc Malnati’s reflections on that short-lived location, and the return of Lou Malnati’s to Vollmer Road in Flossmoor.

We have been about the business of opening a few stores every year, as we seek to spread the gospel of deep dish pizza. But the thing that makes this new store in Flossmoor so unique, is that it was this very location in the Flossmoor Commons Centre that almost bankrupted our 45 year old company before we even got started.

After a 22 year career at Pizzerias Uno and Due, my father decided to branch out on his own in 1971. He opened stores in both Lincolnwood and Elk Grove Village that year to rave reviews. By 1973, he had taken on New York partners, who planned to spawn pizzerias up and down the east coast. Lou imagined that he could become the Ray Kroc of pizza, until doctors told him that he had cancer in early 1974, as he turned 45 years old.

Surgery and treatment ensued, and for a few short years, it looked as though Lou might beat the disease that he and my mother had fought defiantly when they created a yearly event to raise money to fight cancer in the name of their fallen young friend and Chicago Bears halfback, Brian Piccolo.

It was during that brief window of health in 1976-77, that Lou decided to apply his energy to creating a new restaurant. The landlords of the Flossmoor Commons told him that the farm land that stretched for more than a mile along the north side of Vollmer Road was about to see a massive housing development, and that Lou could join anchors, Robert Levine Menswear,Fork of Friendship Fondue, and Yaseen Jewelers. He was sold on the opportunity.

During the year after the new store opened, Lou’s cancer returned with a vengeance. Things went from bad to worse when the promised housing development failed to come to fruition and Malnati’s signature deep dish was slow to gain acceptance as most of our south side customers had grown up on thin crust pizza.

In the meantime, I graduated in the spring of 1977. I split my time between trying to manage the newest restaurant, and spending time with my father prior to his passing in 1978. Though I wanted nothing more than to see my dad’s dream through by helping to get Flossmoor on track, my mother and I decided to close it amidst a mounting debt of nearly $600,000 in May of 1978. The debt created in building out the Flossmoor Commons site brought us extremely close to falling into bankruptcy, and almost forced us to shutter the other two restaurants as well.

Hard work and an entrepreneurial will to get up off the mat prevailed. We paid back the loans over the next few years, and as the dust settled, we began to invest in growing our staff and new store opportunities.

Today, we have 45 Chicagoland pizzerias and one location in Phoenix, Arizona. We have over 3,300 employees, that keep us ticking. And now, almost 40 years after locking our doors in Flossmoor, we will throw them open for a second time in the very same location, with a carryout and delivery shop. And boy, does it feel good to be back!

Lou Malnati’s will return to Flossmoor in fall 2016, and this time? Deep dish is here to stay!